Tracy Arm Cove to Ford’s Terror, inside - 6 hours, 27 miles

We left a bit later today because be had to be at Ford’s Terror rapids at slack high tide, which was around 4:15pm. We don’t dare go through at low water slack, although it has been done. The visibility is almost 0 as we leave Tracy Arm to cross the bar. We are using the GPS and radar to determine our course. The tide is rising here in Holkam Bay and we encounter very turbulent water as we near the bar. Fred has to hand steer as we face approximately 5 knots of current against us as we leave. We managed 1.5 knots SOG (speed over ground) at 1800 RPM. Not very convenient. We could not even see the red & green buoys marking the channel. Heather & Ann sat on the bow on iceberg watch duty. It was hard to spot them up ahead as our visibility remained very poor. The weather was so depressing I made some chocolate chip cookies for the crew. We had an hour to kill outside the Ford’s Terror narrows before high tide, so we took that time to anchor by the waterfall. So around 4:15pm at high tide we could finally get through Ford’s Terror rapids. The water was smooth as glass. It was beautiful and pretty foggy, but we were just getting misted on and not rained on. The fjords here are awesome, even in the rain. The rock walls on one side were 5,200’ and on the other 5,700’. Amazing. And as we came into our cove past another dozen waterfalls, we ended up in a punchbowl of fog. There is a waterfall at one end of the cove, near where we anchor, that is pretty loud. Reminds me of the sound you enjoy in Hawaii of the waves crashing as you go to sleep. So we sit here and watch the fog roll in and out. Sometimes you can see the shore, and sometimes we’re in complete whiteness. Dinner tonight is crab linguini. About a pound of fresh crab we just got last week with some onion, butter and spices over linguini. Spells pretty good from where I sit…. OK, well it was delicious, but… Heather seemed to be the only one of the 4 of us that became ill. She was SO sick the rest of the night. Not fun, and could not fall asleep until very late because of it.